Aggression in Children & Adolescents

As children grow and learn to navigate big emotions and relationships, moments of aggression can naturally occur. Toddlers may hit or bite, while young children may push, yell, or throw things when they are feeling frustrated or overwhelmed. All children can have moments like these as they learn how to respond to situations that feel difficult or manage emotions that feel too big for them. Sometimes, however, aggressive behaviors can become more frequent or intense, leaving both children and their caregivers feeling overwhelmed and unsure of what to do next.

What is aggression?

Aggression usually refers to behaviors that are meant to hurt or cause harm. However, aggression is not a single thing, and it can show up in quite different ways. To understand the different types of aggression, it is often helpful to look at its “forms” and “functions.”

We can try to understand aggression through its form by looking at “how” someone becomes aggressive. For example, someone can act aggressively in an overt way, where the aggressive behaviors are observable to others, or more covertly, through discreet acts. Most commonly, there are three forms of aggression:

• Physical aggression happens through actual or threatened physical, often bodily, harm. This can show up as kicking, throwing something, pushing, or hitting. Some studies also consider verbal aggression (such as yelling, name-calling, and insults) a form of physical aggression.
• Relational aggression happens through actual or threatened actions that make another person feel rejected or excluded, such as gossiping, spreading rumors, or rejecting someone.
• Cyber aggression happens through actual or threatened harm using technological mediums, such as social media, texting, gaming, and streaming.

While forms of aggression help us understand aggression through “how” someone aggresses, the functions of aggression, or “why” someone aggresses, can provide another way to understand aggression. Most commonly, there are two functions of aggression:

• Proactive aggression means aggressive behaviors that have the goal of obtaining something, including getting something desired or rewarding, or avoiding something perceived as punishing.
• Reactive aggression means aggressive behaviors that emerge as a response or reaction to a real or perceived threat, often from others or the environment.

Understanding the form and function of aggressive behaviors helps us assess and design interventions for aggression. Still, in real life, aggressive behaviors often emerge in more complex and unique ways, where these forms and functions can overlap and interact. For example, a child’s yelling and name-calling can be used to obtain a sense of dominance over peers (physical proactive), or it can occur as a result of feeling rejected or scared (physical reactive), depending on the situation and context. 

Aggression vs. violence

Another important concept that can help us understand aggression is violence. Although these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, aggression is the broader category of intentional behavior aimed at causing harm. Violence, on the other hand, generally refers to more extreme or severe forms of physical aggression, particularly those that can result in serious injury or even death.

Why do children and adolescents become aggressive?

Children are expected to reach certain developmental milestones as they grow and develop cognitive, emotional, and social skills and abilities. However, each child’s developmental journey is different due to factors such as temperament, genetic makeup, and environment. These factors can influence how quickly or effectively certain skills develop, meaning that some skills may be more underdeveloped in certain children.

Some of the developmental factors that affect whether a child will become aggressive appear to be more biological and naturally occurring. Even within the same family, where the environment, genetics, and parental influences are relatively stable, children still come with their own unique “characteristics.” These stable aspects of a child’s personality are called temperament, which refers to relatively stable predispositions related to negative emotionality, effortful control, and sensation seeking.

Negative emotionality refers to a child’s natural tendency to react to situations with negative emotions, such as anger and fear, which can increase their tendency toward aggression. Effortful control refers to a child’s ability to regulate their behavior and emotions in order to meet their goals. A child with low effortful control may tend to be more impulsive, which can lead to more aggressive behavior. Finally, sensation seeking refers to a child’s natural preference for novel experiences, sensations, and risky activities. If a child is temperamentally more sensation-seeking, this may create a tendency toward proactive aggression, as the child may seek out new sensations and stimulation through aggressive behaviors.

Similarly, cognitive theories of aggression suggest that the way a child processes information can make them more vulnerable to becoming aggressive. All of us observe reality through our own personal lens, which often involves some level of distortion or “tweaking” of reality, where we project our expectations or previous experiences onto an event. Children and adolescents with more aggressive tendencies consistently show one such remarkable bias called “hostile attribution bias” (HAB), where they tend to assign a hostile meaning to events, people, and even their own emotions, even when they are neutral or positive. This tendency can make children feel threatened by others more frequently and, as a result, become more reactive in order to protect or defend themselves. This type of bias is at least partly socially learned, or may become exacerbated by experiences where the child actually feels unsafe or threatened. Over time, the child may generalize this sense of threat to other people and situations

Another important finding from cognitive theories of aggression points to a child’s underdeveloped verbal, problem-solving, and social skills. In particular, more reactive and relational types of aggression may occur because the child does not know more helpful ways to defend themselves or assert their boundaries when they feel threatened, or how to build and repair relationships.

Affective models of aggression also highlight the importance of emotional regulation in managing aggression. Most children can experience difficulties with managing big emotions. For some, the sensations and feelings that come with each emotion can feel unbearable, and the child may not be able to calm themselves down and return to a more regulated state on their own. This may be especially true for children who are temperamentally more sensitive to emotional changes, where reactive aggression can become a way for the child to organize and discharge their own uncomfortable feelings. Similarly, a child’s feelings of understimulation and under-arousal can make them more likely to seek out those sensations through proactive aggression and risky behaviors, again as a way of bringing their internal sense of balance back toward equilibrium.

Most theories also agree on the effects of the environment, including caregiver and peer relationships, as well as broader societal factors such as poverty and inequity, on a child or adolescent’s aggressive tendencies. More harsh, controlling, and abusive caregiver and peer relationships can often lead to increased tendencies toward aggression, including both reactive and proactive aggression. Similarly, abuse, neglect, and more systemic forms of oppression, including poverty and inequality, can disrupt a child’s typical course of development, cause them to miss important opportunities to develop social, cognitive, and emotional skills, and make them more vulnerable to using aggressive behavior as a way to cope with and organize their inner life.

There are also other theories that conceptualize aggression through its different qualities. For example, from a psychodynamic perspective, aggression is sometimes understood less as a simple, standalone observable behavior and more as an expression of underlying drives, conflicts, affects, and relationships. Depending on a person’s unique experience, it can serve defensive, adaptive, or destructive purposes.

For example, in one such view, aggression can be seen as initially intertwined with vitality and spontaneous activity, and it becomes destructive when developmental and environmental processes fail to adequately contain and integrate it.

While their point of view differs, these different theories reflect the following quality about aggression that it is as an inner experience or representation of it, or a way of organizing inner experience, which often emerges or becomes more consistent not as a result of a single thing, but rather through a combination of many factors, including individual factors (such as temperament and personality), environmental factors (such as parenting and peer relationships), and more, something that we are all capable of experiencing.

Aggression and other mental health conditions

Children with frequent and intense aggression may also have comorbid conditions such as ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder, anxiety, depression, autism spectrum disorder, or trauma-related disorders.

For example, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) describes a pattern of angry or irritable mood, arguing with or defying others, and deliberately annoying or blaming others, while conduct disorder involves more serious behaviors such as aggression toward people or animals, destruction of property, stealing or lying, and serious rule violations. Although the link is not always clear, these conditions and aggression often interact, with each potentially influencing or exacerbating the other.

Just as importantly, children’s and adolescents’ aggressive behavior can have a boomerang effect over time because others often don’t react well to aggression. When this happens, early aggression can lead to more peer rejection, family conflict, and other difficulties. These experiences can then increase the risk of both internalizing and externalizing problems, such as anxiety, depression, social withdrawal, delinquency, and substance use. 

Interventions and care for aggression in children and adolescents

Aggression can be a pretty complex thing to understand, which also means that working with aggressive behaviors, especially in children and adolescents, may take time and consistent effort. This is true for children, caregivers, and professionals alike, as understanding and addressing these behaviors is rarely a quick or straightforward process.

At the same time, aggressive behaviors do not have to define a child or their caregivers. With patience and a willingness to understand what may be underneath these behaviors, the way for meaningful change and more balanced ways of relating to others can be opened.

Children and caregivers may benefit from seeking professional support when aggressive behaviors become consistent, frequent, or intense, and begin to create distress or overwhelm for the child and those around them. Options can include individual, family, or group therapy, support groups, or school- and community-based intervention and skill-building programs that may be available locally.

While these types of interventions and support may differ eventually, they often share certain components that target aspects of aggressive behavior.

As explained above, when aggressive tendencies occur as a compensatory response to a child’s underdeveloped verbal, problem-solving, relationship-building, and repairing skills, support can benefit from including psychoeducation and skills training, where children learn more useful ways to solve problems, get what they want, express themselves, set boundaries, and connect with others.

For aggressive tendencies that result from a child’s attempts to regulate the hyperarousal or emotional intensity they feel inside, or from seeking sensations and feelings outside because they feel understimulated internally, building emotional regulation skills and co-regulating with parents can be effective. However, it is important to specify the type of regulatory activity needed by differentiating between overstimulation and understimulation. For example, for a child who feels overstimulated, breathing exercises and gentle movement can help them reach a more grounded state, whereas for a child who feels understimulated, these activities may bore them further, and they may find it more regulating to engage in increased physical activity, such as exercise, or activities involving greater novelty and problem-solving.

Co-regulation is another method where caregivers or professionals regulate alongside the child in the moment until the child can regulate themselves. For example, this can involve a synchronized breathing exercise where the caregiver guides the child while also practicing the breathing exercise themselves.

One key aspect of skill-building in children, whether it involves building social skills or emotional regulation, that is often overlooked is that these skills cannot become effective or generalized if they are only occasionally applied during crises and aggressive outbursts. In fact, children may benefit more from being taught these skills when they are already calm and regulated, and from practicing them regularly so that they can more easily remember and use the learned skill when they need it. This is because many of these skills are somewhat similar to learning to play the guitar in terms of how our brains learn them. We do not learn and improve simply by watching others do it or by doing it here and there. We actually need to pick up the guitar, try, and keep trying so that the skill becomes learned.

Similarly, understanding the form and function of aggressive tendencies is essential when determining the focus of psychoeducation and skill-building in children, as not all skills may be equally helpful for every child. For example, for children who have more proactive aggressive tendencies, where they are aggressive as a way to obtain a goal or reward, building more empathy for the victim may not necessarily move the needle much. Instead, focusing more on alternative ways of achieving goals and emphasizing the benefits of these approaches to the child can make more progress possible.

Independent of the type of aggressive behavior, interventions can also benefit from improving parent-child interactions so that caregivers can better support their children. Increasing the quality of the child-caregiver relationship can have both protective and reparative effects on regulating aggression, while also increasing the child’s sense of safety and trust in others, which can help them feel more resourceful when facing challenges.

Lastly, aggression often does not occur in isolation and can co-occur with other challenges in children, including ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), conduct disorder, anxiety, depression, autism spectrum disorder, trauma-related disorders, and more. That is why care for aggression can be most helpful when it focuses on understanding each child and their unique experiences, rather than trying to put them into a box, and considers their challenges in a more holistic way.

Takeaways

• Aggression usually refers to behaviors that are meant to hurt or cause harm. In terms of form, aggression can be physical, relational, or cyber, involving actual or threatened harm, rejection, or exclusion.
• In terms of function, aggression can be proactive, used to obtain something desired or avoid something perceived as punishing, or reactive, emerging in response to a real or perceived threat.
• Children’s aggression usually develops through a combination of individual and environmental factors, including temperament, cognitive biases, emotional regulation, relationships, and experiences such as abuse, neglect, poverty, and inequality.
• Hostile attribution bias, underdeveloped social/problem-solving skills, and difficulties regulating emotions can make aggression a way for children to defend themselves, express themselves and get what they want, or manage uncomfortable internal experiences.
• Frequent and intense aggression can co-occur with ADHD, ODD, conduct disorder, anxiety, depression, autism spectrum disorder, and trauma-related disorders, with each potentially influencing or exacerbating the other.
• Effective intervention requires time, consistent effort, skill-building, regular practice, and co-regulation, and improving the child-caregiver relationship with strategies matched to the child’s form and function of aggression.
• Understanding each child’s unique experiences not defining them through their aggressive tendencies is essential in increase safety, trust, and resourcefulness and support more balanced ways of relating to others

References & further reading

• Booker, J.A. (2023). Oppositional Defiant Disorder. In: Matson, J.L. (eds) Handbook of Clinical Child Psychology. Autism and Child Psychopathology Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24926-6_40
• Fite, P.J., Tampke, E.C., Griffith, R.L. (2023). Defining Aggression: Form and Function. In: Matson, J.L. (eds) Handbook of Clinical Child Psychology. Autism and Child Psychopathology Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24926-6_36
• Malti, T., & Rubin, K. H. (Eds.). (2018). Handbook of child and adolescent aggression. Guilford Press.
• Sturmey, P., Taubner, S., Rabung, S., Bateman, A. and Fonagy, P. (2017). Psychoanalytic Concepts of Violence and Aggression. In The Wiley Handbook of Violence and Aggression, P. Sturmey (Ed.). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119057574.whbva042

---

At Roamers Therapy, our psychotherapists are here to support you through anxiety, depression, trauma, and relationship issues, race-ethnicity issues, LGBTQIA+ issues, ADHD, Autism, or any challenges you encounter. Our psychotherapists are trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, Psychodynamic Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Person-Centered Therapy, and Gottman Therapy. 

Whether you’re seeking guidance on a specific issue or need help navigating difficult emotions, we’re ready to assist you every step of the way.

Contact us today to learn more about our services and schedule a session with our mental health professionals to begin your healing journey. To get started with therapy, you can fill out our inquiry form. You may use this form whether you plan to use insurance benefits, self-pay, or out-of-network benefits, and to receive details about your out-of-pocket costs and our therapists’ availability. Once your appointment is confirmed, you’ll receive intake documents to complete before your first session.

This page is also part of the Roamers Therapy Glossary; a collection of mental-health-related definitions that are written by our therapists.

While our offices are currently located at the South Loop neighborhood of Downtown Chicago and Lakeview on Chicago’s North Side, Illinois, we also welcome and serve clients for online therapy from anywhere in Illinois and Washington, D.C. Clients from the Chicagoland area may choose in-office or online therapy and usually commute from surrounding areas such as River North, West Loop, Gold Coast, Old Town, Lincoln Park, Rogers Park, Logan Square, Pilsen, Bridgeport, Little Village, Bronzeville, South Shore, Hyde Park, Back of the Yards, Wicker Park, Bucktown and many more. You can visit our contact page to access detailed information on our office location.